What was Robert’s answer?
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Roberts didn’t answer - this was part of a long speech by Biden with no opportunity for Roberts to respond. It is about 1/3 of the way down on the page.
U.S. SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HOLDS A HEARING ON THE NOMINATION OF JOHN ROBERTS TO BE CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
Transcript: Day One of the Roberts Hearings
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/13/AR2005091300693.html
BIDEN: And we’ll be faced with equally consequential decisions in the 21st century.
Can a microscopic tag be implanted in a person’s body to track his every movement? There’s actual discussion about that.
You will rule on that — mark my words — before your tenure is over.
Can brain scans be used to determine whether a person’s inclined toward criminality or violent behavior?
You will rule on that.
And, Judge, I need to know whether you will be a justice who believes that the constitutional journey must continue to speak to these consequential decisions or that we’ve gone far enough in protecting against government intrusion into our autonomy into the most personal decisions we make.
Judge, that’s why this is a critical moment. There are elected officials in this government, such as Mr. DeLay — a fine, honorable, patriotic man — and others who have been unsuccessful at implementing their agenda in the elected branches. So they have now poured their energy — as the left would, if it were different — and now poured their energies and resources into trying to change the court’s view of the Constitution.
And now they have a once in a lifetime opportunity, the filling of two Supreme Court vacancies, one of which is the chief and the other is for associate justice — the first time in 75 years.
>>What was Robert’s answer?--------------^^^^^^^^^^^^
Roberts didn’t answer - this was part of a long speech by Biden with no opportunity for Roberts to respond. It is about 1/3 of the way down on the page.
He unjustly levelled against Justice Clarence Thomas during his own Supreme Court nomination:
Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would strike down laws restricting property rights.” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find it attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”pp 235-236 of "My Grandfather's Son" by Clarence ThomasSince I didn’t remember making the statement in the first place, I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say in reply was that “it has been some time since I have read Professor Macedo … But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court.” It was, I knew, a weak answer. Fortunately, though, the young lawyers who had helped prepare me for the hearing had loaded all of my speeches into a computer and at the first break in the proceedings they looked this one up. The senator, they found, had wrenched my words out of context. I looked at the text and saw that the passage he’d read out loud had been immediately followed by two other sentences: “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.” The point I’d been making was the opposite of the one that Senator Biden claimed I had made.